"Brother-in-law, I thought you wouldn't show up. I didn't expect you to give these people so much face!" After the developer conference's presentation session ended, Huang He returned backstage and heard Leng Zhimeng ask with a smile.
"It's not that I'm giving them face, but our platform will rely on them to survive in the future! Naturally, I have to treat them well and let them know that our company's efforts in developing this platform are being pushed forward by me, the chairman," Boss Huang said faintly.
"I understand. It's all the fault of those damned game companies. How dare they look down on us? They will definitely regret it later!" Leng Zhimeng said, waving her little fists, her face full of anger.
Boss Huang's hurried convening of this developer conference was indeed somewhat unavoidable. The Jiangnan Group had consistently failed to establish stable cooperative relationships with major game manufacturers worldwide.
Besides Jiangnan Group's own game companies and studios, and a small number of smaller enterprises, all game enterprises with a scale exceeding tens of millions had refused to cooperate with Jiangnan Group and refused to allow their games to be launched on the oo mobile game platform.
So, these were all things he had anticipated. However, the unified refusal from these companies still made Boss Huang feel a bit incredulous.
He could sense that a force was operating behind the scenes, driving these game companies to jointly refuse him.
As for where this force originated, Boss Huang had a vague idea.
But precisely because he had guessed the power behind it, Boss Huang knew that this matter could not be stopped by his own efforts alone.
Either he directly took down the mastermind, or he had to offer these game companies irresistible benefits, tempting them to ignore the warnings and control of the force behind the scenes and choose to cooperate with him.
Therefore, capturing these independent game developers was crucial. This was why Boss Huang personally attended the developer conference and, like a pyramid scheme organizer, gave passionate speeches to inject them with enthusiasm. It was because the oo mobile game platform desperately needed their power at this time.
You might think that the oo mobile game platform is currently at its peak, with projected monthly revenue in September to exceed 200 million US dollars, which is indeed frightening.
However, this revenue is extremely unstable, and the vast majority of it relies on a single game.
And this game, called "Damn Angry Bird," actually has quite ordinary playability. If it weren't for its addictive gameplay and widespread promotion across social media networks, this game would have long been forgotten. Even playing it for three days would be considered remarkable.
But even with these external supports, the golden age of "Damn Angry Bird" would end after September at the latest. Just like in his previous life, the game's popularity exploded overnight, and then within half a month, it became obscure again. This was precisely because the game's core lacked depth and rich gameplay experience, failing to occupy more of players' time. Its demise was only natural.
To avoid disappointing sales figures in October, and to leverage the huge impact "Damn Angry Bird" had across the entire network, Boss Huang, without the support of game companies, had to gain the support of these independent game developers to have their works fill the gap.
In fact, what Boss Huang said during the speech was not nonsense; rather, every word was the absolute truth.
For the mobile game platform, independent game developers indeed created much more value than game companies at present.
Because with limited mobile phone performance, winning by relying on game graphics or content is unrealistic, as the platform cannot support such high-quality graphics and content. Therefore, victory can only be achieved through various novel gameplays and creative ideas, which is precisely what independent games champion.
Boss Huang no longer wanted to see another "Damn Angry Bird." The game's popularity was largely due to him pouring money into it, lacking sustainable development.
Boss Huang hoped to see 100 games with 1/10th the value of "Damn Angry Bird." Only then could the oo mobile game platform truly set sail.
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After resolving the follow-up sustainable development issues for the oo mobile game platform, Boss Huang rushed to another meeting.
However, this meeting was one that Boss Huang had long anticipated, as he was finally going to see the finished product of his much-desired super TV series.
Just three days ago, Weta Workshop in New Zealand finally delivered good news: the first season of "Piaomiao Journey," comprising a total of 24 episodes, had completed all post-production visual effects. It only awaited the director's final review and editing before it could be released.
In fact, because the director of the TV series had been in New Zealand throughout the entire process, cooperating with the visual effects studio on the VFX work, the final version was essentially the director's final edited version. After Boss Huang's personal review, everything being in order, it could be released directly.
Upon receiving this news, Boss Huang felt a sense of mixed emotions, as everything had been incredibly difficult to achieve.
More than two years ago, Weta Workshop began taking on the visual effects work for "Piaomiao Journey," and only now had the entire project been completed, spanning a full two years and four months.
While this duration might not be too long for a TV series, for Boss Huang, it felt exceptionally long.
Two years ago, Boss Huang had invested almost all his net worth into this TV series.
Now, two years later, the visual effects production cost of this TV series was less than 1/20th of Boss Huang's wealth.
However, to be fair, the production cost of this TV series still set a world-class record.
Yes, this was not a record for Chinese TV production costs, but a record for TV production costs worldwide, as over 850 million US dollars were spent on various visual effects.
And during these two years, Weta Workshop did not accept any orders from other film companies, but its scale expanded by five times.
Before taking on this project, the entire Weta Workshop had 1,000 staff members, half of whom were on the verge of being laid off due to a lack of new work.
However, after taking over, the staff gradually expanded to a scale of 5,000 people. Their monthly salaries alone amounted to 20 million US dollars, yet it was still insufficient to meet the workload. The entire studio was operating at full capacity, which is how they managed to complete the visual effects for all 24 episodes in two years.
There was no choice; Boss Huang's demands were extremely high, requiring all visual effects shots in the TV series to use film-level visual effects, with no room for laziness.
Therefore, the first season of "Piaomiao Journey" could absolutely be considered top-tier in terms of visual effects. And not just the ceiling of TV visual effects, but the ceiling of film visual effects.
Keep in mind that this was a TV series with a total of 24 episodes, and each episode's runtime was not 40 minutes, but 60 minutes.
So, the total runtime of the entire TV series reached 1,440 minutes, with visual effects shots accounting for 240 minutes.
What kind of concept is this?
A normal movie is only 120 minutes long. The visual effects duration of the entire TV series is equivalent to two movies. From this, you can see how exaggerated the visual effects shots were this time.
Although the staff eventually increased to about 1,000 people, if Jiangnan Group had not shipped a full 200 servers to New Zealand, connected them together to form a supercomputer to provide computing power for all visual effects calculations.
If Boss Huang had not directly acquired the entire Weta Workshop and poured in US dollars without regard for cost, none of this would have been possible.
And now, all of this had come before Boss Huang.
"My dear director, President Tyler, thank you for your hard work!" In the reception hall of his presidential suite, Boss Huang shook hands warmly with these two executives from Weta Workshop and said gratefully.
One of them was Peter Jackson, the chief director of "Piaomiao Journey," and the other was company president Richard Taylor, who was also the company's technical director, responsible for the overall visual effects work.
These two could be considered the core figures of the entire production and even the entire studio.
"Not at all. Being able to participate in the production of such a great TV series means we are destined to go down in history!" Peter Jackson said with emotion.
In fact, Peter Jackson was not originally the director of this TV series, as Boss Huang had not hired him. He had already directed epics like "The Lord of the Rings" and was a legendary Hollywood director. Asking him to oversee the shooting of a TV series would have been somewhat insulting.
Moreover, Peter Jackson's main focus at the time was on filming "King Kong," which was also a childhood dream of Peter Jackson's, so he wouldn't have had the energy to divert to "Piaomiao Journey."
Of course, the most important reason was that Boss Huang did not want a foreigner to direct a film based on Chinese culture. So, he selected a few promising talents from China and, together with an experienced academic director from China, directed the live-action shooting of the TV series.
Later, during the post-production phase, problems arose. Chinese directors had almost no experience with visual effects production, so they lacked specific concepts for visual effects. This led to numerous issues when cooperating with the studio on visual effects production.
Even so, the most critical issue was that many of the live-action shots from the initial filming were unusable due to conflicts with visual effects, and the entire project was once on the verge of being redone.